Author: Protos
Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News
For years, the cryptocurrency industry has promoted blockchain with a unified pitch: digital assets can be traded 24/7, while traditional financial exchanges close at 4 p.m. and don't reopen until the next day.
This week, the world's largest clearinghouse completely rejected this argument.
The National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC) is the stock business subsidiary of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which processes securities transactions worth quadrillions of dollars annually.
A recent announcement shows that NSCC has now achieved 24-hour clearing operations every business day. For reference, DTCC processed approximately $3.7 quadrillion in securities transactions last year, and its stock clearing system can now process trades in traditional financial instruments like stocks overnight.
DTCC is phasing in the 24/5 settlement system. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) first approved rule changes, and the institution completed client testing earlier this year; major exchanges like Nasdaq plan to launch overnight trading sessions from this year through 2027.
Although NSCC claims to operate 24 hours a day, five days a week, the institution admits that while the core clearing system runs continuously, some supporting ancillary systems will pause for one hour on weekday nights for technical maintenance.
This extension of DTCC's clearing hours deals a significant blow to the cryptocurrency industry's core narrative of "never closing." The only remaining differentiating advantage for the crypto sector is: DTCC only clears on weekdays, while crypto markets operate on weekdays + weekends; if this 5x24 implementation runs smoothly and market demand continues to grow, DTCC may further open weekend clearing services in the future.
DTCC Has Repeatedly Dashed the Hopes of Crypto Believers
Crypto market investors still harbor fantasies, with some trying to interpret this news as bullish for the industry: "DTCC officially starting 24/5 settlement from Monday to Friday is paving the way for comprehensive asset tokenization." Such interpretations are strongly wishful and deviate from the facts.
While tokenization of traditional assets like stocks has seen small-scale pilots, DTCC is under no obligation to use any public blockchain and is more likely to develop its own private distributed ledger.
In fact, this DTCC update is just another example of the institution repeatedly disappointing crypto enthusiasts over the years. Whenever DTCC announces any project remotely related to blockchain, the crypto community inevitably attaches its own lofty expectations.
For a long time, supporters of public chains like Ethereum and the XRP Ledger have repeatedly predicted that DTCC would integrate their systems, yet such implementations have never materialized.
In choosing actual production business systems, the clearinghouse has consistently prioritized permissioned, closed private infrastructure over public chains. In 2022, DTCC launched Project Ion, a settlement platform built on a private, permissioned ledger, not using any public chain; subsequent commercial projects have followed the same selection logic.
In December 2025, DTCC partnered with Digital Asset to tokenize U.S. Treasuries on the permissioned Canton Network. Public chain developers criticized the solution for its high barriers to entry, but this did not change the institution's decision.
Expectations from XRP holders have been particularly strong. As Protos previously reported, none of DTCC's current clearing operations are connected to the XRP Ledger. A directory published earlier this year also failed to change the situation, only being over-interpreted by the Ripple community.
In summary, the world's leading clearinghouse has successfully implemented a 24/5 settlement system without using any public blockchain, and without the on-chain business traces that crypto enthusiasts have long predicted.
XRP, frequently associated with DTCC by the crypto market, was priced at $1.05 at the time of writing, down about 20% over the past 30 days and roughly halved compared to its price a year ago.
The traditional finance industry's 24/5 market has launched smoothly, relying on its existing mature infrastructure, and the crypto industry did not get a ticket to the party.
